The present invention relates to an electric fishing reel of a manual/electric compatible type which has a drive motor for rotationally driving a spool supported rotatably on a reel body and which winds and drives a spool by the rotative operation of a manual handle provided on one side of the reel body.
Typically, an electric fishing reel is so constructed as to transmit the rotational driving force of a drive motor provided on a reel body to a spool through a planetary gear mechanism (reduction gear mechanism). Generally, a clutch mechanism for changing over the spool between a fishing line winding state and a fishing line releasing state (spool free state) is disposed in the power transmission route. In addition, the reel body is provided with a manual handle to allow not only the electrically powered driving using the drive motor but the winding drive of the spool by manual operation. The winding driving force applied by the manual handle is adapted to be transmitted to the spool through the clutch mechanism provided in the power transmission route.
In the electric fishing reel, since a planetary gear mechanism having planetary gears is interposed in the power transmission route of the spool, even if the clutch mechanism is switched over (clutch OFF) to the fishing line releasing state (spool free state), some gears of such as the planetary gears are rotated together with the spool in an interlocked manner, so that the rolling frictional resistance due to the meshing of gears is generated, resulting in inferior freely reeling-out performance. Hence, a problem remains that the fishing line with the terminal tackle cannot be reeled out speedily.
Accordingly, to overcome such a problem, JP-A-2002-145 discloses an electric fishing reel in which a drive coupling mechanism of a drive motor is interposed serially in a drive coupling mechanism from the manual handle to the spool, and the coupling between the manual handle coupling mechanism and the spool is cut off to reduce the rolling frictional resistance of the spool.
The clutch mechanism of the electric fishing reel disclosed in the above-described JP-A-2002-145 is adapted to axially move a power transmission gear provided on a spool shaft by operating a switching member (clutch lever) provided on the reel body. Namely, a retaining portion having a noncircular cross section is formed on the spool side of the power transmission gear, and the operation of the switching member causes the power transmission gear to slide in the axial direction, whereby the retaining portion of the power transmission gear is engaged with or disengaged from an engaging portion provided on the spool or a spool shaft integral with the spool, so as to switch between the power transmitting state (fishing line winding state) and the power cutoff state (fishing line reeling-out state).
However, the above-described power transmission gear is in a state of meshing with the gear for transmitting the rotational driving force from the handle side (drive motor side), and is adapted to move the power transmission gear in the axial direction with the gears meshing each other. Therefore, there are problems in that damage is possibly caused to the power transmission gear, and the meshing driving noise becomes large.
In addition, since terminal tackle including a sinker having some weight is attached to a fishing line, the load in the rotating direction on the mutually meshing gears becomes disadvantageously large, so that it becomes difficult to switch the clutch from ON to OFF. Particularly in the meshing between gears, it is desirable to use helical gears whose contact ratio is high, whose meshing performance is excellent, and which produce small meshing driving noise. However, if consideration is given to the ease of disengaging the clutch (ease in axial movement of the power transmission gear), the helical gears cannot be used. In this case, even if helical gears are used, if satisfactory clutch operability is taken into consideration, the helix angle of the tooth trace cannot be made large, so that there is a limit to the improvement of the meshing performance.